Back to the Basics: Pay-Per-Click Campaigns

Its amazing how many paid pay-per-click (ppc) ads appear in search engine result pages (serps) that are poorly written or irrelevant to what I was searching on.

Here are some basics principles to keep in mind when launching a pay-per-click campaign:

• Keywords - Only bid on keywords that are highly specific to your business and are likely to convert into a sale. Limit your ads to only display in certain geographic regions if it makes sense to do so.
  
  
• Ads - Include the keyword in the ad headline and then explain your "unique selling point" (USP). Basically, whatever makes your product or service better than your competitors. If you can, offer a teaser of some kind; a free gift, a discount or a trial sample of your product.
  
  
• Landing Page – Include the keyword you bid on, reinforce the messaging of the ad, include product screen shots and a clear call to action.

See our videobelow to see how we used the basic principles described above to achieve a 10.15% click-through-rate (CTR) and 4.79% conversion rate for a client during a 6 week PPC pilot program (even before we did any keyword analysis or A/B testing on the landing page).

Research vs. Buying Intent Keywords

In my "What Makes a Good Keyword" blog I wrote about how important it is to do a through analysis of potential keywords before investing the effort optimizing your website or launching a pay-per-click campaign

If your website sells a product or service, keep in mind the most probably intent of the user between different keywords. Is the user just browsing the Internet on a subject or is it more likely they are ready to make a purchase?

For example, imagine you have a website that sells all types of shoes and are considering which of the following keywords to optimize your website for: "top shoes", "running shoes", "ASICS Gel-1130". In general, the more specific a keyword search is ("ASICS Gel-1130” in our example) the more likely it is that the user is ready to make a purchase and not just researching the subject ("shoes" in our example) anymore.

Beware: While identifying keywords with buying intent (or whatever your definition of a site conversion is) verify the number of searches on the keyword phrase (by using a tool like Google’s External Keyword Tool). Many keywords that are buying orientated are less searched upon but you’ll find that you will be able convert more of these visitors.

To learn more about our SEO Website Consulting services contact our website consulting team.